While the American public is distracted by fears that the President was going to try to indoctrinate their children into Socialism, just like Hitler did with his Hitler Youth (with no apparent sense of irony in pairing these contradictory ideologies in one sentence) with one speech, no one seems to have noticed the publication of figures for the trade in weapons of mass destruction for 2008. The sums are breathtaking (link):

‘The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before…Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year’

Note the date—2008, last year of the presidency of George W Bush. Republicans are good for big business. And, it seems, the business of war is booming. Bush’s tax cuts for big business really worked.

Does anyone wonder where the guns come from that keep the world’s poorest people in perpetual agony? The figures above make very clear where 68.4% of them come from.

So, America, let me get this straight: one president takes the country into two wars at the cost of trillions of dollars, and places American business at the centre of provision of arms for wars all over the world, and is good because that is capitalism; another president seeks to provide health care for the children of his own country, and is bad because that is socialism.